Iceland Porn Ban Portends A Brave New Pornless World

A proposed Iceland porn ban is, as The Inquisitr reported earlier, a contentious issue — mainly because the internet doesn’t get moved about much of anything until someone messes with the global treasure trove of tatas.

The Iceland porn ban is, interestingly enough, not based on an American-style morality objection when it comes to sexual permissiveness. As we reported earlier, morals do come into play in regards to the internet porn kibosh, but not in a “sex is bad” sort of way.

In our earlier piece on the potential Iceland porn ban, we quoted Halla Gunnarsdóttir, adviser to the interior minister Ögmundur Jónasson, who explained that the concerns about pornography and access to it stem from a fear of passively promoting abuse and sexual violence — the adviser said:

“We are a progressive, liberal society when it comes to nudity, to sexual relations, so our approach is not anti-sex but anti-violence. This is about children and gender equality, not about limiting free speech.”

Gunnarsdóttir also noted:

“When a 12-year-old types ‘porn’ into Google, he or she is not going to find photos of naked women out on a country field, but very hardcore and brutal violence … There are laws in our society. Why should they not apply to the Internet?”

Academic and gender studies expert Hildur Fjóla Antonsdóttirsaid of the Iceland porn ban proposal:

“This initiative is about narrowing the definition of porn so it does not include all sexually explicit material but rather material that can be described as portraying sexual activity in a violent or hateful way. There are some who say it can’t be done technically – but we want to explore all possibilities and take a political decision on what can be done and how.”

But on the Iceland porn ban proposal, Smari McCarthy of anti-censorship group the International Modern Media Institute disagrees. McCarthy explains that freedom aside, proposals like the Iceland porn ban often have a spate of negative, unintended consequences on the internet as a whole:

“This kind of thing does not work. It is technically impossible to do in a way that has the intended effect … And it has negative side effects — everything from slowing down the Internet to blocking content that is not meant to be blocked to just generally opening up a whole can of worms regarding human rights issues, access to information and freedom of expression.”

However, Parliament member Birgitta Jonsdottir opines that the odds of a “state filter” creating an effective Iceland porn ban are near “zero,” and says that people need to protect their own children on a house by house basis rather than rely on a sweeping censoring of porn across the country.